Chapter 6

“Emma? You in here?” Brandy’s voice pierced the silence in Bette’s office, making Emma jump and thwack her head on the open file door above her.

“Sumina-humina-ow!” She put a hand to the back of her head, wincing in pain as she rose slowly from where she’d been crouching on the floor sorting through Bette’s endless piles of paperwork as morning sunlight streamed through the windows.

“Oh, no. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Brandy reached a hand out to help Emma up, then pulled it back awkwardly when Emma didn’t take it. “You’re totally going to get me a bell, aren’t you?”

“Can’t say I haven’t considered it.” Emma tried to smile, but good Lord, her head was already growing an egg. “Can I help you with something?”

“Are you okay? Do you need some ice?”

“I’m fine.” Emma pulled her hand away from her head. “Sorry to yell.”

Brandy laughed carefully. “Yeah. That curse was blistering. You talk to your mother with that mouth?”

Emma rolled her eyes. “My best friend’s a kindergarten teacher. She’s trained all of the good swears out of me.”

“Well, looks like you might get them back, working with me.”

“It’s a possibility. So what can I help you with?”

“Katrina just sent me to ask you if you know when the visiting nurses’ meeting is this afternoon. And she needs coverage so she can go, but Sarah’s out sick, Meg has an appointment, and Sukeisha’s already over hours for the week.”

“But—it’s only Tuesday.”

“She’s been here all weekend covering.”

“Oh. Well, then.” Emma nodded like she knew what to do about the situation, when in reality, she didn’t have a clue. “What’s the meeting about?”

“Sending Margaret Sanders home.”

“Oh! That’s lovely. Is she better?”

Brandy didn’t answer for a long moment. Then she pursed her lips softly and shook her head. “Um, no.”

“Then why—” Before she completed the question, Emma realized why poor Mrs. Sanders must be going home. “Oh, no.”

“Yeah. It’s what she wants. And her family’s okay with it as long as there’s skilled nursing. So…skilled nursing’s apparently showing up sometime this afternoon, but Bette never told us when.”

“Okay.” Emma nodded. “Any idea where Bette keeps a calendar?”

She started sliding folders around on the desk, looking for anything resembling a dated grid, and when she didn’t find anything, she wiggled the mouse to wake up the computer. Maybe it was there?

Brandy cleared her throat. “Not sure you’re going to find anything there. Bette’s allergic to that thing.”

“Does anyone know where she keeps a calendar?”

“She pretty much just—knows.” Brandy pointed to her head. “Steel trap, she says.”

“Well, she apparently took her steel trap with her.” Emma fought not to sigh. “I’ll call the visiting nurses agency and see what they have scheduled. As for coverage, what do you guys usually do in this sort of situation?”

“I don’t know.” Brandy shrugged. “Bette just—handles it.”

“Excellent. Okay. Well, then.”

“Sumina-humina?”

Emma snorted at Brandy’s quiet question, then put her hand to her nose in embarrassment. “Yes. Exactly.” She rolled her eyes. “Tell Katrina I’ll figure it out, and I’ll come find her once I have some answers.”

“That mean you’ve figured out how to get around without getting lost?” A deep male voice filtered into her office about a half-second before a distinctly strong, male hand knocked loudly on the open door. “Look. I’m knocking. Everybody dressed in there?”

Emma laughed, even while she could feel her face go scarlet when Brandy raised her eyebrows knowingly.

“Yes, thank you. Fully clothed.”

He still didn’t come around the corner. “Permission to enter, if I bring a fresh cup of coffee straight from downtown?”

“Depends. Is it for me?”

“Yes. An abject apology for my boorish behavior yesterday.”

She laughed again. “Then you may enter.”

He swung into the room, and she fought to keep her lower jaw from heading toward her toes. Hot flipping damn, he was gorgeous. As he held out the coffee with his left hand, she couldn’t help but take one more quick glance to see if there was a ring glinting on his finger.

Nope.

Not even the scar of one.

“Thank you.” She lifted the cup toward her face and inhaled the steam. “Oh, God.”

He laughed. “I love that reaction to my coffee.”

“Well, if it tastes half as good as it smells, I might have to marry you.” She froze, the cup halfway to her lips.

Oh, Em.

“I mean—not marry—I mean—wow. Coffee.”

Good. Lord.

He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “You’re not the first to propose to me for my coffee.”

Brandy raised her hand. “I totally did. So did Katrina, and she’s been married for twenty years.”

“So it’s a thing?” Emma took a sip, grateful to both of them for helping her off her own self-created hook. “The unintentional proposals?”

“Oh, hell, no.” Brandy laughed, punching Jasper lightly as she headed for the door. “I meant mine. Jasper, if you have any idea where Bette keeps a calendar, staff contact numbers, area agency numbers, or anything of any organizational help at all, Emma would really appreciate it.”

“I know none of those things.” Jasper cringed. “She didn’t leave that stuff for you?”

Emma swept her arm around the room, which—despite three hours of effort thus far this morning—still looked like the victim of multiple tornado systems.

“If she did, she’s got a very unique coding system I haven’t cracked yet.”

“Huh.” He looked at his watch. “Well, right now she’s under anesthesia, so that’s not helpful. Want me to help you look?”

“That’s okay. I’m sure you’re here to visit your dad.”

He paused. “I can help. He doesn’t really keep time like he used to. A few minutes won’t make much difference.”

“Ta-ta, then,” Brandy called as she left the room. “Try to keep that coffee in the cup this time, Emma, okay?”

When she was gone, Jasper scanned the office. “In her defense, Bette actually does run a pretty tight ship. You just wouldn’t know it from in here.”

“I’m sure she does. But no, not really getting that vibe.”

He smiled. “I could go try to steal her phone while she’s in surgery. Maybe that’s where she keeps everything.”

“Not the worst idea.” Emma sipped her coffee. “But possibly illegal, and I don’t have time to bail you out or take responsibility for your criminal behavior, so…I think I’m stuck with trying to figure things out from here.”

“I can’t honestly believe she wouldn’t have at least left you a folder of directions or passwords or something to work with. She knew she was going to be out.”

“Well, if she did, she hid it well.”

“Or we’re not thinking like her.”

Emma felt her eyebrows hike upward. “Well, I don’t actually know her, so that presents a bit of a challenge.”

“Good point.”

“I swear, I don’t know how she got anything done in here.” Emma picked up a stack of papers. “Stuff is four years thick in here.”

“She’s not all that into paperwork, I’d guess.”

“Thank you, Sherlock. I hadn’t surmised that yet.”

“In her further defense, Bette firmly believes that managing should be done on the streets, not in an office.”

“Streets?”

“Yeah.” Jasper’s eyebrows furrowed. “Main, Bear, Moose, and Bobcat? Didn’t Katrina give you a tour yesterday?”

No, Katrina had never used those words. “She showed me the North, South, East, and West wings. And I managed to find—and get lost on—the extensions all by myself. Is there another floor or something I don’t know about?” Emma felt a flutter in her gut, realizing again just how clueless she was about this place she was supposedly managing.

“Nope.” Jasper smiled. “Inside joke still, I guess. Bette tried to get some project approved whereby she’d redecorate the hallways so they looked like streets. Awnings over some windows, some decorative signs, stuff like that. Mostly for dementia patients. She’s always reading about these places in Europe that she says are so far ahead of us in elder care, and so she got it in her head to try something here that she’d seen.”

“So the street names?”

“She let the residents vote at lunchtime one week—those that could, anyway.” He frowned. “So even though the central office said no to the project, Bette and the nurses kept the street-name thing alive.”

Emma sat back in Bette’s chair, taking another long sip of coffee. “Central office said no?”

“Sorry.” He shrugged. “I know that’s you.”

“Not me directly.” Emma set her cup down, pondering for a moment, then reached into her bag for her laptop. “Let me show you something.”

Jasper leaned forward and helped her clear a space for her computer, tipping his head in amusement as she opened it up and click-clacked on the keys. Finally, she landed on a website she had bookmarked for over a year. She turned the laptop toward him.

“Does this look familiar?”

He squinted, then smiled broadly. “Yes. You know about this place?”

“Know about it, went to the Netherlands to visit it, wrote it up as a possible model for us to consider, and went down in a flaming splash at the proposal meeting.”

Emma clicked through the pictures of an elder-care facility that had done just what Bette had proposed, turning some of its hallways into street-like walkways, erecting awnings and signage that made the place look like an outdoor marketplace, painting the domed ceiling sky-blue, and installing sauna tubes to let natural daylight filter in through the roof. The residents could even stroll or roll into little pretend shops that carried items like snacks and drinks and toothpaste and deodorant, a volunteer would bag up their purchases in nice handled bags, and they could roll back home to their rooms.

It was one of many places that Emma admired, but Galway Health apparently wasn’t quite ready to embrace the practices that were earning such praise overseas.

“They didn’t think it could work? Doesn’t the evidence say otherwise?”

“The evidence is compelling. The evidence is overwhelming. But the cost is, as well. And that’s where I lost them.”

Jasper nodded thoughtfully. “So is that your…thing? Studying models and making proposals?”

“It’s part of my thing. And sometimes they actually like my proposals.”

“Encouraging.”

“It’s a process.” Emma sighed. “Actually, you might find it interesting—or maybe frustrating—that I did propose renaming a number of our facilities.”

“No way.”

“True story.”

“Shot down?”

“Flames.” She frowned. “My boss is a firm believer in names that he thinks invoke rest and relaxation.”

“Like Shady Acres here? Which sounds like it should be on an episode of Golden Girls or something?”

Her eyes popped open. “Exactly!” Then she narrowed them. “You don’t really watch that show, do you?”

“Almost every day.”

“Shut up.”

“Dad loves it. Don’t even ask me why, and if some miracle cured his Alzheimer’s and I told him he’d been eating breakfast with Ruth and Dorothy for the past two years, he’d never, ever believe me. But there’s something about it, I guess.”

“Did your mother ever watch it?”

“All the time, and he picked on her mercilessly about it.”

Emma smiled. “Maybe it reminds him of her, somehow.”

“Maybe.” Jasper nodded, then shrugged, looking almost sad. “Hard to know.”

“I’m really sorry about your dad. I didn’t know that’s why he’s here.”

“It’s rheumatoid arthritis that got him an early ticket here, actually. His mind is still pretty okay, most days. We both wanted him settled somewhere so it’s familiar when things get…worse.”

“Makes good sense.”

“It’s a good place. Bette hires the best, so hopefully that’ll make your life easier for the next few months.” He pushed up out of his chair, and Emma felt a pang of disappointment in her chest. He was leaving? Already?

And she cared?

“I’d better get to Dad before he eats my breakfast and his own.”

“You really come eat with him every morning?”

“Every day that I can.” Jasper nodded fiercely. “It’s the least I can do. He’s better in the mornings. Less confused than later in the day, so it’s important time. And speaking of time…” He made a twirling motion with his index finger, indicating Bette’s office. “I have a feeling you’re not going to find anything helpful in this office.”

“Well, that seems clear already.”

“But maybe it’s on purpose.” He winked. “Bette wouldn’t want her replacement hiding in her office. She’d want her out on the floors, hanging with the patients, working with the nurses.”

“Oh.” Emma tried not to feel stung. He hadn’t sounded judge-y when he said it, but still…

“I think you’ll find everything you need out there somewhere.” He pointed down the hallway. “Bette’s funny like that.”

“Hilarious.”

He smiled, then tapped his fist on the doorframe. “You’ll be fine. She wouldn’t have left you without a net. You just have to get out there and find it.”